I'm an investment manager in public and private equity. My business advises fund managers, tech start ups and non-profits. I was a top-ranked sell-side analyst on Wall Street for a decade. I have a masters and bachelors from the University of Maryland and specialized in global satellite communications in graduate school.

6 Survival Skills For Disasters And Attacks; Dealing With Political Assassins

All professionals face political infighting that can limit a career or even end it. Business life can be imperiled by dangerous situations where safe exits are blocked and the obvious choice is to face off with the attacker. Survivors come up with clever ways to outwit and outlast opponents. They pick their battles carefully and only after weighing the odds. If the odds are stacked against them, they get the challenger to back down or find another route to glory.

Winners live to fight another day.

These tips will help you survive attacks and walk away unscathed. You don’t have to win every battle, just endure them. To advance your career, you need a few well-executed land grabs. To be triumphant at work, you don’t have to be the most glorious warrior or the most beloved saint. But you do have to be positioned well to capture the spoils. For survival guidelines, we adapted the “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook” by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht. Here are tips to being the last man standing in the corporate world.

1. Understand Your Attacker

First, determine the attacker’s motives: to protect his own territory or take yours? Does he want to wound you or eat you? Is he a guard dog or mountain lion?

Guard dogs ferociously protect their turf against insurgents, but are lap dogs to their owners. They are spoiled with a limited repertoire of skills. The corporate equivalent is the high-salaried support staffer with limited educational credentials. To survive, lay low and they dog will go back to sleep.

Mountain lions, on the other hand, want to devour you. They lay in the weeds rather than bark their heads off. If a lion pounces you die, so don’t go there. Make yourself look bigger and show aggression. In the wild, you can open up your coat to look like a big bat. In the corporate jungle, group yourself with allies with big offices. Nothing scares off a mountain lion like the threat of counter-attack from the corner suite. He’ll lose his appetite.

2. Learn to Take a Punch

A body blow is a simple way to knock someone unconscious. If you are taking a body blow, tighten your stomach muscles. If the blow is to the gut, turn sideways to protect your internal organs. If it is a hit to the head, lean into the punch to absorb it before it reaches maximum velocity. If you don’t, it could be fatal. The corollary in business is if you are in a duel, be prepared to duck and weave.

3. Escape from Fatal Situations

You need to understand whether the situation is a disaster and how much time you have to escape. Did your car crack through ice or are you in a burning building without a fire escape? Some situations demand fast decisions with no room for error.

Cars plunging into rivers and buildings in flames are risky situations. You need a plan and to remain calm. Before your car hits the water, roll down the window so the water pressure inside the car stays equal to the pressure outside. Then you can open the door underwater and swim to the surface. In a five-alarm fire, look for a nearby dumpster and prepare to jump. As you do, tuck your body in a summersault position, then rotate around so you will land on your back in the trash bin. The objective is to walk away alive.

Not all employees of Lehman Brothers and MF GlobalMF Global wore scuba suits or flame-resistant underwear, but the ones that did are fine. As the boy scouts say, “Be prepared.” Always stay on good terms with your competitors, keep your resume updated and have your headhunter handy in your smartphone. Save friends from perilous situations so you can call them in on emergencies.

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Ben Gilad, a former strategy professor at Rutgers and founder of the Academy of Competitive Intelligence and his business partner Mark Chussil explore the opportunities that business war-games can offer executives.